Iran surging weapons transfers to Hezbollah as war looms with Israel

Israel has reportedly destroyed many of the terrorists’ air defense systems, necessitating their replacement.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

As the threat of an all-out Israel-Hezbollah war grows, Iran has stepped up its efforts to supply its chief proxy with more weapons, missiles and air-defense systems, Ynet reported Monday.

The air-defense systems are among the most important items Tehran is smuggling into Lebanon, as they are Hezbollah’s only defense against Israeli air strikes.

Hezbollah has managed to use their systems successfully several times so far, intercepting and destroying five IDF UAVs, including the downing of a large Hermes 900 drone with a surface-to-air missile a month ago.

The report says that the IAF has destroyed “a significant number of such systems” since Hezbollah began supporting Hamas just one day after Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Gazan envelope communities sparked the ongoing war.

Hezbollah’s main threat to Israel so far has been the firing of thousands of missiles, UAVs and anti-tank rockets over the border. These have killed 16 soldiers and 10 Israeli civilians to date and wounded many more, including 18 troops in a drone strike on the northern Golan Heights on Sunday.

The only reason the death toll is so low is that Israel evacuated some 60,000 residents from border communities at the start of the war. The property damage has been huge, however, and fires from downed rockets have also destroyed hundreds of dunam of land.

According to the report, one of the airborne threats Iran is smuggling in as quickly as it can is the Almas (“Diamond”), a precision, anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) that has an advanced warhead and guidance system and versions that can reach 16 kilometers into Israel.

It is based on the Israeli Spike missile, which Iranian specialists reverse-engineered after one was captured by Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

In a March report, The Telegraph described how Tehran smuggles its weapons now to Hezbollah, to avoid Israeli airstrikes on its land convoys. The arms are first shipped to Syria, then loaded on vessels that go to Belgium, Spain and Italy. Properly “laundered” with fake paperwork, they are then sent back to Syrian and then southern Lebanon ports.

According to the IDF, Hezbollah’s annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars comes almost entirely from the Islamic Republic, as do almost all of its weapons.

In addition, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force oversees its puppet’s “force build-up, strategic and operational architecture… and training of commanders and fighters,” said an army explainer.

In what would be a change of policy, Iran threatened last week to support Hezbollah directly instead of only behind the scenes if the mullahs see that an Israeli offensive is seriously endangering its proxy.

If Israel launches a full-scale attack, a “war of annihilation” would ensue, the Iranian UN delegation wrote on X on Friday, in which “all options, including the full involvement of all resistance fronts are on the table.”

Iran attacked Israel directly in April with a few hundred missiles, including cruise missiles, after the IDF assassinated top Iranian generals in Damascus. Working together with an international coalition, Israel shot down 99% of the aerial threats.

The recent increase of war rhetoric stems in part from Hezbollah’s recent escalation of rocket and UAV launches into Israel, with a surveillance drone even reaching Haifa.

As Israel has repeatedly stated, no government would allow missiles to hit their countries without making every effort to end the threat.

Jerusalem has waited for nearly nine months, shutting down its whole northern region instead of taking the war to Hezbollah, even though a majority of Israelis agree that this is necessary if they are to live freely in their own country.